POP MUSIC REVIEW : Honeyed Retro From Voice of Beehive

Somewhere between the classic girl groups of the early ‘60s and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” spirit of the early ‘80s came Jackie DeShannon, proving that a woman could make great pop music without being totally dependent on help from the guys. At the Palace on Wednesday, Voice of the Beehive--a London-based quintet fronted by former Valley girl sisters Tracey and Melissa Belland--accomplished the same thing in early ‘90s terms.

In fact, about half of the Beehive’s 75-minute set recalled DeShannon’s best mid-’60s hits: chipper, clever pop songs with some depth beneath their attractive surfaces. The guitar-pop music was retro without sounding archaic; the lyrics implicitly feminist without making a point of it, stressing independence without being strident.

And never did the Bellands--redhead Melissa wearing a pink tutu and her hair in long pigtails--let us forget that, well, girls (and women) do want to have fun. The half of the songs that didn’t recall DeShannon recalled the quirky B-52’s.

The one problem is that these Bees always cook with honey, and what they served Wednesday was just a bit too sweet and not quite as nourishing as you might hope.

Ditto for opening act the Odds, who played a half hour of nice power-pop highlighted by a couple of memorable songs. But overall, the Vancouver quartet is interchangeable with the handful of other current bands that have added nothing to the definitive contemporary power-pop of Crowded House and the Smithereens.